U.S. immigrants –43% on welfare after 20 years

Expanding legal immigration is a contentious issue for voters, the vast majority of whom tell pollsters that they want the levels either retained or decreased.

But most politicians want legal immigration expanded.

During his time in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama backed bills that would have dramatically boosted legal immigration, potentially by hundreds of thousands a year. As president, he has called for the same thing.

“We need to provide our farms a legal way to hire workers that they rely on, and a path for those workers to earn legal status. And our laws should respect families following the rules — reuniting them more quickly instead of splitting them apart,” Mr. Obama said in a major speech on the subject in El Paso, Texas, in 2011.

His presumed Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, in June called for increasing legal immigration for students who study in high-tech fields and admitting unlimited family members of those who hold green cards.

“Our immigration system should help promote strong families as well — not keep them apart. Our nation benefits when moms and dads and their kids are all living together under the same roof,” Mr. Romney told the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Mr. Camarota’s report took a broad look at the immigrant population and found that immigrants are contributing to major changes in American society, including that one-fourth of public school students now speak languages other than English at home.

It also found that immigrants as a population lead complex economic lives that aren’t easily put into one category or another.

Immigrants made up more than half of all farm workers, 41 percent of taxi drivers and 48 percent of maids and house cleaners, but they also represented about one-third of all computer programmers and 27 percent of doctors.

The statistics varied greatly by geography. In Massachusetts, native-led households averaged $89,000 in income while immigrant households averaged $66,000.

In Virginia, immigrant-led households averaged $93,000 in income, far outstripping native households’ $80,000 average. Likewise, immigrant families averaged a larger tax burden in Virginia — though they also had higher rates of use of welfare or Medicaid.

The center found that use of public benefits varied dramatically based on where immigrants originated.

Mexicans were most likely to use means-tested benefit programs, with 57 percent, while 6 percent of those from the United Kingdom did. The rate for native-born Americans is 23 percent.

Mr. Camarota said a key dividing line is educational attainment. Immigrants who have been in the U.S. 20 years and who have bachelor’s degrees or higher make slightly more than the average native-born American. But immigrants with only high school educations make less no matter how long they have been in the U.S.

“The fact is the less-educated in particular — they don’t do well over time,” he said. “It’s not reasonable to expect an immigrant who comes to America with only a high school education to close the gap with the native-born.”

Scholars debate whether the current wave of immigrants will assimilate differently from those in the 1800s and at the start of the 20th century.

George Borjas, a Harvard University professor, has argued that second-generation Americans — the children of today’s immigrants — will fall behind in wages by about 10 percent by 2030.

But in “Assimilation Tomorrow,” a report released in November, Dowell Myers and John Pitkin said immigrants of the 1990s eventually will attain high rates of home-ownership and 71 percent will become U.S. citizens by 2030.

Those authors said immigrants were set back by the recent recession but were still on track to follow the same assimilation path as previous waves of immigrants.

They also said a program to legalize the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. would be critical to helping assimilation.

Dennis why don't you first get off the government TITI and maybe other
will follow suites," Aren't you a little embarrass not earning a
honest living bro??, you killing us hard working democrat,

I was waiting on some honey but there aren't no Queen bee,

Esco, you ARE KIDDING RIGHT? Honest Living? You, illegally here, and telling a legal resident (much less a US Citizen) to get a honest living?

The height of your stupidity and mental retardation always amazes me. YOU ARE ONE of the 15 million reasons we need to enforce the border and ENFORCE THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE. Oh, and while we are dreaming, lets make the border just a LITTLE HARDER to walk/jump over.

Your just pissed because you don't want your free stuff taken away from you. You are a illegal alien TROLL of the lowest standard.

greyeagle

dont you guys get tired of esco mucking up every post with his idiotic drivvle?Even the leberal lefties stay away from that moron.Maybe putting that moron on the ignore list will help.
He really should get married and have some kids so that he can spend more time with them rather than babbling on about nothing.